Yes, the Academy does love it when their actresses engage in "ACT-ing," preferably at a high volume.

Case in point: August: Osage County has zipped ahead of Julie & Julia and The Iron Lady as the least-deserving Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep films. But hey, she out-shouts Julia Roberts, which is a public service in my opinion.

And in Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett (the likely winner) gives full Blanche DuBois descent-into-madness – an acting trope that is to drama what the Moonwalk is to dancing.

In neither case, did they literally sweat out a role the way Sandra Bullock did in Gravity. It amazes me that people walk away from that movie and talk all kinds of geek stuff (if she yanked George Clooney’s tether in zero-G, wouldn’t he just come flying back to her?), but seldom stop to think that they just watched an actress perform in virtually every frame of a 91 minute movie.

And it wasn’t just a matter of showing up. Her reaction to the disaster-in-space remained constantly and unwaveringly between the goalposts of professional problem-solving and panic. It wasn’t Sigourney Weaver yelling “bitch!” at a xenomorph, but it was as rooted in reality as Hollywood gets while maintaining a life-and-death drama.

Moreover, unlike any other of the other actress candidates, Bullock was flying uncharted skies, doing something no one has done before.

Think about it. Of the hundreds of movies that have been set in space, how many have entirely and pointedly been set in the environment of zero-gravity? Even in Apollo 13, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton were strapped down for most of it. Bullock is strapped into a chair only briefly, and even that gives us the disorienting sight of a tear emerging from her eyeball and floating away from her face.

The other candidates all owe something to somebody. Amy Adams (American Hustle) wouldn’t be the first actress to gumcrack her way to an Oscar. Cate Blanchett owes as much to Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (and Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford) in her car-wreck portrayal of a corrupt billionaire’s trophy wife on the skids.

But the closest performances in screen history to Bullock’s in Gravity have all been Earthbound – Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Robert Redford in All Is Lost (or Jeremiah Johnson decades earlier).

But director Alfonso Cuaron created an entirely new universe in Gravity. Yes, that universe has been there all along and has been experienced by hundreds in real life. But in terms of verisimilitude, it’s brand new in Hollywood’s eyes. If Oscar’s prestige is to be taken seriously, shouldn’t someone doing something for the first time ever, making up her own rules as she goes along, be a shoo-in for its ultimate honour?

There will be other performances along the lines of Bullock’s, now that Cuaron has shown the way, technologically and conceptually. But she pioneered this one.

Twitter: @jimslotek

jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca

Liz says... Dench won't win it, but she should

Dame Judi Dench isn't going to win an Oscar this year for Philomena, but a lot of people — like anyone who's seen the movie — hope she will win.

Her nomination for Best Actress is her seventh Academy Award nod; she won Best Supporting Actress (Shakespeare In Love) in 1999.

As Mr. Slotek points out, there's a hell of a lot of capital-A-acting going on among this year's Best Actress contestants, and while Cate Blanchett looks like a dead cert for the prize, a lot of people would vote for Sandra Bullock or Judi Dench if they could. And Bullock may very well win yet, you never know.

Dench is likely not even close, but were Oscars actually handed out on a basis of merit, the British actress would win. Hands down.

In Philomena, Dench must walk a line so fine that she's right up there with any of the Flying Wallendas — there's no room for error. For one thing, she's playing a real person, with all that entails. And her character is the moral compass in the story; Philomena is a very hard tale about an Irish woman deprived of her own child by catholic nuns, but more than that it's a story about faith and forgiveness, and it's up to Dench to put that across.

That's a huge job.

Philomena has historical, political and social ramifications that are still major in Ireland. The movie (directed by Stephen Frears) is based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by investigative journalist Martin Sixsmith. Lee had a child out of wedlock in the 1950s and wound up in a home for unwed mothers run by Irish Catholic nuns. In exchange for a place to go and hide their 'terrible sin', girls like Philomena worked for years in the laundries and kitchens of the convents as a sort of unpaid labor force. Other films such as The Magdalene Sisters have illustrated the hideous experiences available to the young women stuck working off their 'shame' in these places.

Philomena's child was one of thousands given up to American Catholic families for adoption; her story is not unique, and it's part of a sorry chapter in Ireland's history. What does differentiate Philomena's tale is the personal journey she took in her lengthy search to find that child and what became of him.

Actor Steve Coogan plays the role of author Martin Sixsmith in the movie and he also co-wrote the film's screenplay. He has explained that the movie doesn't waste time pointing fingers at the Church or belabouring the culture of the past. As he said, "The important thing is the fortitude with which some people deal with the bad things in their lives. That was important, and so was the triumph of hope over cynicism, which is something I wanted to look at."

By looking at it via Judi Dench, he made it work. Dench is completely believable as a woman whose capacity for forgiveness and simple faith have fuelled her life and kept her sane in the face of frankly extraordinary cruelty. Dench's nuanced performance is note perfect and completely affecting, and yet, subject matter notwithstanding, there is not even a hint of the maudlin or sentimental. Philomena is not about moving an audience to tears, of either the regular or zero-gravity variety. It's about moving an audience to understanding.

There's no shouting in Philomena, no hand-wringing, no histrionics and no scenery-chewing. And hence no chance for an Oscar, one assumes.

Nonetheless, for bringing Philomena Lee to life and shedding light on the heartbreak endured by a lost generation of young mothers, Dame Judi Dench deserves an Academy Award.